Did Sasquatch Really Exist in 1977?

Did Sasquatch Really Exist in 1977? by Jay

Of course he did!  At least to an eight year old kid who went to the cinema to see Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977)...  For several Saturday mornings before its release in theaters, tantalizing previews were aired to promote the film.  As an impressionable eight year old, anything about mythical monsters and extraterrestrials purporting to be real was food for digestion.  One of the previews I distinctly remembered was a kneeling trapper named Jessup in a campground with his back turned to the camera.  As the camera panned in on him (obviously the eyes of Bigfoot), this ominous music was playing.  Jessup began to turn just as the camera (Bigfoot) cast a shadow over him, and I was left to wonder about the poor trapper's fate.  I had to see this movie!  Several weeks went by as I anticipated the premiere.

I don't know what I expected, but when I finally went to the theater to see it, I left feeling somewhat disappointed.  The basic plot was told in an obviously fictitious docu-drama format concerning an expedition to find the legendary, hairy beast.  Maybe it was the fact that Bigfoot didn't come thumping down the aisles during the showing?  Or perhaps it was because much of the climax was filmed in the dark, and all I could see was a bunch of paper mache rocks being hurled by a guy in a gorilla suit?  Whatever the reason, I left wanting more.  But what? 

Looking back, I think it was the historical mystery itself that gripped my imagination.  The stories of Sasquatch, or Bigfoot if you will, are ultimately something that can't be told successfully on screen.  These are legends that are meant to be told on a crisp, fall evening around a campfire or scribbled about in a collection of stories by a competent and colorful writer.  Myths and legends are meant to have gaps that only one's imaginative thoughts can fill.  Visually, however, Bigfoot is a major disappointment. At least, so it proved to me.  Legends are only meant to seen in the mind of each individual.  Anything else is setting up the creative imagination for failure. 

This afternoon, my brother and I, for lack of anything better to do, decided to watch the film for the first time in nearly thirty eight years.  Someone had downloaded it on YouTube.  Decades after first watching it, the old film was crackly and skipped in various spots, only to be expected from a low budget production made in the mid-1970's.  The flowery music that was played in the background sounded as if it were being piped from a psychedelic, multi-colored love van, and the actors' voices (including a wise old trapper named Josh and a wannabe Indian named Techka Blackhawk) were indistinct and muted, burping forth from shadowy or etiolated faces.  The rugged scenery, with virgin forest and snow capped peaks would have been visually appealing if it were not for the fact that the ancient, forty year old film almost appeared as if it were folding in on itself.  I almost got the impression that I were viewing ghostly glimpses of the dead stiffly moving through the woods on phantom horses in a dim, colorless world which had drifted away long ago.  Even the animals presented, including a mountain lion, seemed to have stepped right out of a taxidermist's workshop.  All seemed dead.  The film seemed to be groaning as if to say, "Please, stop...  no mystery here...  the past is in the past...  no more...  let me settle in upon time and close my eyes... forever..." 

Some of the last words spoken in the film were by the actor who played the pseudo Indian, Techkna Blackhawk.  After failing to capture the ever elusive Bigfoot, Techkna said, "It is done.  We can go home now."

And so it should be said to allow all great legends to continue to grow, and until all time should forever pass into that collective space of forgotten nothing.